"Twenty years! How time flies in this world, sir!" was the concluding remark of Mr. Hughes.
There was no drawback thrown in the way of this marriage of Travice Arkell's, by himself, or by anybody else; and the day for it was fixed as soon as he became convalescent. Mrs. Arkell had to reconcile herself to it in the best way she could; and if she found it a pill to swallow, it was at least a gilded one: Mrs. Dundyke's money would go to him and Lucy—and there was Miss Arkell's as well. They would be placed above the frowns of the world the hour they married, and Travice could turn amateur astronomer at will.
On the day before that appointed for the ceremony, Lucy, in passing through the cloisters with Mrs. Dundyke, from some errand in the town, stopped as she came to that gravestone in the cloisters. She bent her head over it, for she could hardly read the inscription—what with the growing dusk, and what with her blinding tears.
"Oh, Aunt Betsey"—she had caught the name from Travice—"if he had but lived! If he could but be with us to-morrow!"
Aunt Betsey touched with her gentle finger the sorrowing face. "He is better off, Lucy."
"Yes, I know. But in times of joy it seems hard to remember it. I wonder—I hope it is not wrong to wonder it—whether he and mamma are always with me in spirit? I have grown to think so."
"The thinking it will not do you harm, Lucy."
"Oh, was it not a cruel thing, Aunt Betsey, for that boy Lewis to throw him down! He was forgiven by everybody at the time; but in my heart—I won't say it. But for that, Henry might be alive now. They left the college school afterwards. Did you know that?"
"The Lewises? Yes; I think I heard it."
"A reaction set in for Henry after he died, and the boys grew shy and cool to the two Lewises. In fact, they were sent to Coventry. They did not like it, and they left. The eldest went up to be in some office in London, and the youngest has gone to a private school."